Spanish views from a small town

Presencial teaching has certain pitfalls, especially when there are two students of different age. Yet, it has its advantages. You can always pick up what the student is writing on, take up a red pen, and point out their mistakes, explaining the issues. You can also take chalk and graphically try to explain a point on what passes for a blackboard. You can look at them as they write, and stop them when you can tell they're doing something wrong because they don't understand. When they speak, you can correct them while looking over their shoulder at the text. One isn't always sitting nor standing, either, and if something comes up in the kitchen, you can always pop out of the study to check out if the cats are breaking all the kitchen glassware. Even though on the worst day, in which I stand up almost all afternoon and my back later hurts, I'm not standing absolutely still. Online learning doesn't have those advantages. It becomes artificial, difficult, and uncontroll...

I read that a study came out some time ago that proved that taking notes during university lectures on a laptop did not help final comprehension of the subject as much as taking them the old-fashioned way, by hand. I could have told them that. It's true that typing on a keyboard let's you write faster than by hand. Yet, when I write on the computer, sometimes I forget what I wrote earlier, and have to go back and check. When I write by hand, which is becoming rarer, I tend to remember better. Some will argue that taking a laptop to class and using it for notes allows you to write down more, and more quickly. I will counter argue, and say that you can also write down more by hand; just learn to listen and discern which are the important points of a lecture and write fast. With practice, you can get it all down. Trust me, I learned to practically transcribe an entire class in high school.  It was a Latin class, where we had to translate passages of Cicero or Virgil for homewo...

When I find that a teenager doesn't know something about history (such as who the Moors were), or considers it dull and not important, my mouth drops open. Their attitude reflects their education and what they are taught that is considered important. No, knowing the reason behind the crossing of several boats from the Moroccan side to the area of Gibraltar in 711 will not get them a job, but it will help understand that the arrival of those people made computer programming much easier by using the Arabic numbers they introduced, rather than the cumbersome Roman numeral system. I can't remember a time I didn't like history or know something about it. When we got our textbooks in September of fifth grade, there was a U.S. history book included. I remember looking it over and comparing it with a high school history book I already had, while the remains of Hurricane David doused us with rain and I occasionally looked out the kitchen window at the bowing trees. I had had old t...

Ignorance is bliss. That is what our educational system seems to think. Bliss for the politicians, because if the electorate never learns to think, then the electorate can be told what to believe and whom to keep in power. To the electorate's loss. But that bliss also comes at a personal cost to all those educated in it. It means not being aware of intellectual riches to be found in our past and in our literature and culture. Riches that can make life a little more comfortable spiritually. But that implies thinking, and that's dangerous for those in power. I mentioned one of these past days that I had to read literature from the Spanish Golden Age for my Spanish classes in high school. I casually asked a high school student yesterday if he had read anything by Tirso de Molina or Pedro Calderón de la Barca in school. He thought Calderón de la Barca was a line of designer clothes. The kid is in the equivalent of eighth grade. By then I had already long discovered who Shakespear...

I'm too young to have ever taken a home ec class in high school. By the time I entered those halls of learning, it had become a relic of the past. I was always under the impression that it had been a way to get good girls ready for their role in society as wife, mother, and homemaker. And that the then-few girls that decided to continue their education were considered failures as proper women. I'm simplifying, but when home ec was common in high schools women were still being held back in the job world. Well, the conservative party that is ruling at this moment in Spain, has decided that it's a good idea to reintroduce the idea of homemaking as a career. At the end of this last August, a law was approved amplifying what can be studied in vocational schools. One of those new courses of study is Actividades domésticas y limpieza de edificios (Domestic activities and cleaning in buildings). Its objective is to prepare a student to be able to keep a household and know how to ...

Have you ever wanted to learn how to knit? Have you ever wanted to own the most iconic cars in miniature? How about construct a model battleship? Read every important book of universal literature? Now you can. Beginning this month you can buy the first installment of any part of human knowledge at your kiosk. And, if you're a millionnaire, you can acquire every installment to its end, in about five years. I'm not kidding. September being the month kids return to school, some adults get nostalgic. So, many pretend to be students once again and learn something new. When you go to buy the newspaper or walk by a kiosk there is the first installment of "Learn German in Two Easy Weekly Lessons" staring at you. It will probably consist of a large booklet of ten pages, and a CD or DVD that lasts fifteen minutes with two lessons. At a modical cost of maybe 1.99. That is paid for and taken home. And yes, it's easy. You have just learned how to say hello , goodbye , and th...

August is almost over and the recuperation exams are nearly here. This is the last week of studying for those who want to recuperate the subjects they failed in June. Some have it more difficult than others. There are those who, after doing nothing all year, expect in two months to learn enough to pass maybe five or six subjects at the beginning of September. And who also think they will enjoy summer at the same time. The Spanish system of education is different. (What isn't, in Spain?) To be promoted from one grade to another, you cannot have failed more than two subjects. If, at the end of June, you have failed anything, you can recuperate that subject at the beginning of September in a species of final exam. If you have failed up to two subjects and don't recuperate them in September, you can recuperate them in January. So, if you fail math in June and September, you go on to the next grade, where you will study that grade's math. The year you failed you study on your ...